Oliver Twist Redux

 "Please help! Bring back better food!" - Van Nuys High School student to Principal Judith Vanderbok

When Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House he proposed a capitol showing of the Hollywood classic Boy's Town as a means to gin up support for his proposed boot camps for troubled teens. The Left retorted that if Newt did a Boy's Town showing, they would counterattack with a showing of Dicken's Oliver Twist. Newt promptly dropped the idea, but in this exchange the Left demonstrated that they believe Oliver Twist is a hero after their own ideology.

Now, Oliver Twist paid dearly for his temerity in asking a work house elder, 'Please sir, may I have some more?" of the runny, grey, porridge the work house boys were forced to swallow.

Oliver would have been far better off to adopt the methods of deprived teens in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Confronted with a Michelle Obama endorsed and promoted lunch diet officially adopted by the District this past fall term - a diet featuring such yummy selections as vegetarian curries and tamales, quinoa salads and pad Thai noodles. -  the kids are rebelling (participation in the District's lunch program has plummeted to just 13%). At Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, Frida Duarte, 16 described the fare as "Like dog food". Many have struck up a thriving black market in lunch items for teens crave. If only Oliver had thought of that.

Meanwhile the Los Angeles Unified School District Cafeteria Fund has imploded to a $20 million deficit catalyzed by the aforementioned collapse in student participation, a 1000% increase in budget for fresh produce the kids won't eat, and the gift of a gold-plated health-benefit package for part-time cafeteria workers, many who stand idle as kids scramble for black market, back-alley lunches.

All told, Michelle Obama's crusade against obesity seems to be having about as much success as Obama's crusade to tranform America into a booming green economy. Wasn't it Leftist Lincoln Steffens in 1919 who said of the newly comprised Soviet Union, "I have seen the future and it works."



Sources for this post include:
1.) "L.A. schools' healthful lunch menu panned by students", Los Angeles Times, December 17. 2011; http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-food-lausd-20111218,0,2593733.story

2.) "Michelle Obama’s Unsavory School Lunch Flop" http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/21/michelle-obamas-unsavory-school-lunch-flop/

3.) Wikipedia, Lincoln Steffens

Tea Party, New Party - What's the Difference?

TEA Partier or New Partier...Can You Choose Correctly?

For the record, as of this writing (Barak Obama in the White House), there is an American-wide mainstream movement of grassroots protesters, encompassing millions of individuals and thousands of self-organizing groups called the TEA Party Movement (TEA is a backronym for Taxed Enough Already). The main focus of the TEA Party Movement is a rebuke of what movement members consider to be outrageous mandates, overspending and a radical agenda by an out of touch federal government with values similar to King George III (see Boston Tea Party in American history). The TEA Party is perceived to be reactionary by many liberal, left-of-center Americans and has been attacked accordingly and vigorously - on August 20, 2011 Representative Maxine Waters of California opined:

And as far as I’m concerned, the ‘tea party’ can go straight to Hell.” [1]

Now the Tea Party is not an official political party, it is, as described above, merely a grassroots movement, and yet it is the target of exceptional venom from the left. This is ironic since leftist idol President Barack Obama  was himself at the very least supported by, and was possibly a "member" of, a party - not an official political party - whose aim it was to drag the Democratic Party to the left, just as the TEA Party seeks to drag the Republican Party to the right. That party, called the New Party, is amply described in this article by former left-wing radical David Horowitz - click on New Party.


[1] "Maxine Waters to tea party: Go to Hell"

Deifying Iliusion

"From the dawn of civilization onwards crowds have always undergone the influence of illusions.

"It is to the creators of illusions that they have raised more temples, statues, and altars than to any other class of men."

Tower of Babel

Source: French social psychologist, sociologist Gustave Le Bon quoted ( p. 108) in  The Crowd:  A Study of the Popular Mind